- "Metacritic/IGN/gamespot suck(s), therefore you are wrong."
- My response: The theme of this post is the critics judgement of MoP. Also, if these reviewers had given extremely positive reviews of MoP, then I think a lot of people in this thread would have been defending them rather than attacking them.

- "MoP is based on a 8 year old engine, ofc it's gonna be worse!"
- My response: Cataclysm was for a 6 year old[ game and it got rave reviews, do you really think 2 years should make such a drastic impact?

First, game review sites have ALWAYS sucked. they often give scores based on what people expect rather then being subjective. "Warcraft was amazing, therefore wow must be amazing because I love warcraft", "wow is so awesome that the expansion must be awesome as well","people are saying pandas are a ripoff, better give it a lower score". See where I'm going?

Next, WoW's engine is perfectly capable of rendering FAR better graphics then WoW has. the MODELS AND TEXTURES are what's outdated. look at the differences between each expansion. new water and SLI in cata, SSAO in mop make the engine, which is based on an 8 year old engine, modern enough.updating models however, would take as much as half the developement time wow has had now.

have you even played the expansion? the pandaren have hardly anything to do with the story after 5.0. they are far from "the main part of the expansion" *spoilers*

5.0 is about the mantid, the sha, and the mogu/zandalari resurgence

5.1 alliance and horde warships show up on the shores of karasange wilds and proceed to rip the jungle apart anduin dies or Atleast garrosh beats him so badly everyone thinks he dies, varian takes his first trial of the high king and the night elves name him their high king, wrathion sends players to the black temple to recruit the black harvest to their faction, once jaina finds out about sunreavers sneaking troops into darnasus she kicks the blood elves out of dalaran and jails or kills any who defy her and then makes the kirin tor exclusively alliance. garrosh gets ahold of the divine bell and starts to figure out a way to try and control the sha. lor'themar breaks into dalaran and slaughters kirin tor until he gets to the prison and sets the sunreavers free he then learns of garroshs plots and basically says if this warchief is just like garithos we might reconsider joining the alliance

5.2 we dont know exactly what happens but things get worse

5.3

5.4?

5.5 siege of orgrimar, at some point garrosh does something so horrible everyone wants him dead so varian who at this point has finished the trials of the high king has hAd every race of the alliance name him their king and hes now leading a group of elite alliance solders and si:7 along with horde rebels into orgrimmar and dethrones the warchief.

now idk about you but i dont see one mention of the pandaren anywhere in 5.1 other then the fact that some of it takes place on pandaria. in fact the majority of it doesnt even take place there it takes place in northrend, kalimdor, and outlands.

so please go on and tell me how 5.1 and the entire expansion is about "fluffy cuddly pandas"

Man, how you describe it makes me so pumped for the wow story and future of it!! Sounds pretty awesome. In fact, even more cool to me than the Arthas(wotlk xpac) story. I played warcraft ever since the first game(the rts) and I just love the lore. No expert, but I like it. The LK story was kinda the peak for me, but if all of the stuff you wrote just there is going to happen... well YEAH

It is around 83%. This is the worst score a WoW expansion has ever had, and way below the expectations of what people predicted.

I'm not trying to start a war of words here, I'm pointing out factual data we now have regarding the quality of the expansion.

EDIT1: We're not talking about the USER SUBMITTED REVIEWS on metacritic here (which can be ignored), we're talking about the actual CRITIC Reviews from respected people like IGN, eurogamer and gamespot.

EDIT2:
Some points people have raised and my response:
- "It's impossible to judge this expansion until it's near the end, so the reviews don't matter"
- My response: You still have to pay full price for the expansion now, regardless of whether it's patch 5.3 or not, so reviews are valid.

- "Metacritic/IGN/gamespot suck(s), therefore you are wrong."
- My response: The theme of this post is the critics judgement of MoP. Also, if these reviewers had given extremely positive reviews of MoP, then I think a lot of people in this thread would have been defending them rather than attacking them.

- "MoP is based on a 8 year old engine, ofc it's gonna be worse!"
- My response: Cataclysm was for a 6 year old game and it got rave reviews, do you really think 2 years should make such a drastic impact?

- "All my friends think MoP is awesome, therefore it is awesome."
- My response: This is anecdotal evidence and as such invalid in the larger context.

Ok so you posted 2 tiems in general to say MoP is garbage, we, NOW, all know you are trolling please get the fuck out and someone god please lock this thread.

Third, actual numbers posted by Blizzard on course of this expansion will show was this expansion good or bad. Until then it would be nice if people would restrain themselves of posting these threads.

Somehow I doubt anyone of you will accept the expansion is bad based on sub numbers. It's a night try though.

---------- Post added 2012-10-14 at 04:47 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Shadowbane

Honestly I find it silly MoP is already being compared to Cataclysm at all. Imo you shouldn't do that until MoP is over and has more patches.

At any rate I'm having way more fun at the start of MoP than I ever had in Cataclysm. Point being, I don't even bother reading critic reviews any more. I used to, when under the impression I should share their thoughts and feelings, then I realised they tend to over-think everything.

Why? History is repeating itself all over again. Unpopular regressive decisions have been made. Any changes that will be made will naturally set the community upon itself. Expect a blog detailing why the changes were made. Cataclysm 2.0.

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

According to the guy I quoted sub numbers would determine whether or not it was good or bad. Please do try and keep up with the conversation.

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

Somehow I doubt anyone of you will accept the expansion is bad based on sub numbers. It's a night try though.

---------- Post added 2012-10-14 at 04:47 PM ----------

Why? History is repeating itself all over again. Unpopular regressive decisions have been made. Any changes that will be made will naturally set the community upon itself. Expect a blog detailing why the changes were made. Cataclysm 2.0.

And since you want Mists to fail so badly, what happens if Blizzard delivers in all 3 major patches and doesn't continue the Cataclysm trend?

Not -trying- to be rude or anything. But you're argument against "It's impossible to judge this expansion until it's near the end, so the reviews don't matter" doesn't even make ANY sense.

We're literally in the first patch of the whole expansion. Many people have said this expansion is better than cataclysm due to better PvE and most importantly for me; PVP. While some numbers have still to be tweaked, the introducement of PvP power was the best that could happen to WoW.

See how I'm talking about PvP and those people are probably talking about PvE? While the majority of wow players might be PvE players, the minority of those players are those reviewers.

Idc if I'm going to be flamed for this. But the reviews of those people don't mean ANYTHING. While I haven't read the reviews, and idk if they have talked about PvP (neither can I be bothered to read those stupid reviews), but I doubt any of those reviewers have even stepped foot into an arena.

Not -trying- to be rude or anything. But you're argument against "It's impossible to judge this expansion until it's near the end, so the reviews don't matter" doesn't even make ANY sense.

We're literally in the first patch of the whole expansion. Many people have said this expansion is better than cataclysm due to better PvE and most importantly for me; PVP. While some numbers have still to be tweaked, the introducement of PvP power was the best that could happen to WoW.

See how I'm talking about PvP and those people are probably talking about PvE? While the majority of wow players might be PvE players, the minority of those players are those reviewers.

Idc if I'm going to be flamed for this. But the reviews of those people don't mean ANYTHING. While I haven't read the reviews, and idk if they have talked about PvP (neither can I be bothered to read those stupid reviews), but I doubt any of those reviewers have even stepped foot into an arena.

I agree with you to a degree.

I just..

When it comes to WoW or other games I enjoy and I'm not skeptical about, I don't listen to reviewers.

Wow never had so much competition as it has now, and still keeping MOP kept 10million ppl.

Mop its a sucess, this doesnt mean everyone that played in Wotlk or Cata are back alot are on Gw2, still on D3, Swtor and the 10000x free online games. It must mean MOP got new players into the MMO market for a game so old to get new players means the machine is running good.

^Quoted For Truth. Metacritic being cited as a source of "end all" authority?? SMH. That's like calling Jeff Foxworthy a teacher based on the fact he hosted the show, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

Metacritic is the worst thing to happen to game reviews since publishers started paying for scores. Game reviews in the first place are terrible as they try to distil opinion into a definitive number. Trying to distil the vast opinions of a wide range of reviewers into a single number is even worse.

- "All my friends think MoP is awesome, therefore it is awesome."
- My response: This is anecdotal evidence and as such invalid in the larger context.

Game critics view on a game is anecdotal evidence on how good the game is? This has never been accurate in the history of anything: films, tv, games, anything. It's anecdotal evidence that they think it deserves 83% and they thought other ones were better, it has nothing to do with if the game is actually good or not.